But what are the alternatives? Adolf Hitler was an atheist. Communism under Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot or Mao Zedong banned religion, but also massacred millions. And science brought incredible and amazing advances, but also pollution and the atomic bomb. A critic of religious dogmatism, Professor Richard Dawkins revolutionised genetics in 1976 with the publication of The Selfish Gene, which explained how evolution takes place at the genetic level. He has since written 12 more bestsellers, including The God…

December 21, 2012 "Information Clearing House" - As a native-born American, I grew up watching cowboy and Indian shoot-em-ups in which the highlight of the movie was when the white guys in the circled wagon train shot the Indians off their horses until all the red men were dead, and very silent. Indians didn’t do a lot of screaming in pain when they were shot; they just expired. Same thing with buck-toothed Japanese, line after line of them, charging into U.S. machine guns, falling instantly silent and dead. It was somehow quite clean, almost antiseptic, these cinematic rituals of death, all staged for the broadest popular consumption to demonstrate the ine…

December 21, 2012 "Information Clearing House" - As NATO and Gulf Co-operation Council terrorists persist in their attempt to destroy the Syrian Arab Republic with car bombs, torture, beheadings and mayhem, the Syrian state has still shown no evidence of imminent collapse. Russia has sent 5 warships to the Mediterranean. China has continued to condemn, albeit with extreme diplomacy, NATO’s interference; Venezuela has offered oil to help cope with Western sanctions; the Syrian financial budget has been decided for 2013; restaurants and cafes continue to open for business in Damascus and normal bilateral diplomatic and trade relations continue to exist between Syria and most of the world’s peace-loving countries. In short, Syria…

So now we have it: what appears to be hard, irrefutable evidence ofRupert Murdoch's ultimate and most audacious attempt – thwarted, thankfully, by circumstance – to hijack America's democratic institutions on a scale equal to his success in kidnapping and corrupting the essential democratic institutions of Great Britain through money, influence and wholesale abuse of the privileges of a free press. In the American instance, Murdoch's goal seems to have been nothing less than using his media empire – notably Fox News – to stealthily recruit, bankroll and support the presidential candidacy of General David Petraeus in the 2012 election.

Saudi Arabia’s harsh Police of Vice and Virtue seem to be setting up shop in northern Syria, with locals reporting that rebel forces have establish Saudi-style religious police around the outskirts of Aleppo, and at least one high-ranking member of the Saudi version was seen in a video taking part.

Former GOP senator Chuck Hagel is rumored to be a leading candidate to be nominated as Secretary of Defense by the Obama administration, and his voting record is eliciting outrage on the right for being insufficiently hawkish on terrorism and insufficiently pro-Israel.

Bank Pays Bribe To Avoid Prosecution HSBC fine: what does it take for a bank to get prosecuted? By Nils PratleyDecember 11, 2012 "The Guardian" - - Is HSBC's $1.9bn (£1.2bn) fine enormous or a drop in the ocean? Well, it's a record for the offence of money laundering and breaking sanctions, which could be said to underline the gravity of the bank's actions. On the other hand, the sum represents about four weeks' earnings given the bank's pre-tax profits of $21.9bn last year. The financial pain is easily bearable. Indeed, the steady upward progress of HSBC's share price since the scandal exploded in July was unaffected on Tuesday morning. Shareholders like the idea the affair is settled and they trust that chief executive Stuart Gulliver's new-broom regime won't fall foul of the US department of justic…

Why the Bible doesn't give Israel a claim to the West Bank | The Electronic Intifada
Having a passport stamped with the names Judea and Samaria reminds me of a trip my family made to Disneyworld, where I got a passport stamped Neverland. That day I met Peter Pan and Wendy. Getting my passport stamped for the West Bank these days, I can hope to stand before the graves of Biblical characters in Samaria and Judea.
What actually can we glean about the area of Samaria from the Hebrew Scriptures? Samaria was a region in the land of Israel with geographical limits that were never clearly defined in the Bible. Originally it was the territory of the tribe of Ephraim and half tribe of Manasseh: its eastern boundary was the Jordan River, the western boundary was the Mediterranean coast. Not surprising since natural boundaries, such as mountains, rivers, deserts, or lakes formed boundaries long before they were hand-drawn by the winners of wars.
After the campaign of Tiglath-Piles…

Thanks for the Warnings, Israel by Johnny Barber -- Antiwar.com
I have been in Gaza for five days now, and I am having difficulty understanding the eight-day war and the subsequent ceasefire. Let me explain the difficulty I am having. The Israeli Offensive Forces insist they protect civilians in Gaza, only targeting terrorists. They have several methods to protect innocent civilians. One method is to call the civilians on the phone; another method is to drop leaflets telling them to flee for their lives, as an attack is imminent. During the latest offensive, Israeli dropped leaflets in the rural areas telling people to flee to the city. In Gaza City, leaflets were dropped warning people to flee to the rural areas. A new, ingenious method they use to protect civilians is to drop “loud, non-lethal bombs” on a home as a warning for the inhabitants as to what will come. They even have a name for this warning. They call it “roof tapping.” Then anywhere from three minutes to 20 minutes pass…

Thanks for the Warnings, Israel by Johnny Barber -- Antiwar.com
I have been in Gaza for five days now, and I am having difficulty understanding the eight-day war and the subsequent ceasefire. Let me explain the difficulty I am having. The Israeli Offensive Forces insist they protect civilians in Gaza, only targeting terrorists. They have several methods to protect innocent civilians. One method is to call the civilians on the phone; another method is to drop leaflets telling them to flee for their lives, as an attack is imminent. During the latest offensive, Israeli dropped leaflets in the rural areas telling people to flee to the city. In Gaza City, leaflets were dropped warning people to flee to the rural areas. A new, ingenious method they use to protect civilians is to drop “loud, non-lethal bombs” on a home as a warning for the inhabitants as to what will come. They even have a name for this warning. They call it “roof tapping.” Then anywhere from three minutes to 20 minutes pass…

You Think You're Getting Social Security But You're Not, Says Multimillionaire Banker
It's maddening, isn't it, when someone who obviously knows exactly what needs to be done insists on being so coy about it? Luckily, Blankfein did offer some specifics on one of those things that we think we're going to get, and aren't: And you can go back and you can look at the history of these things, and Social Security wasn't devised to be a system that supported you for a 30-year retirement after a 25-year career. So there will be certain things that the retirement age has to be changed, maybe some of the benefits have to be affected, maybe some of the inflation adjustments have to be revised.Huh. So Blankfein–who was paid $16 million last year, and owns $210 million worth of his company's stock–thinks that people can retire on Social Security after working for 25 years? As Gene Lyons pointed out, that would mean that people are getting their first payc…

Black Friday: American Wage Slaves Fight Over Chinese Slave GoodsNovember 26, 2012 "Information Clearing House" - How does it make you feel when you see people fight like animals – over something like a new iPhone5 or Samsung Galaxy mobile phone?You can tell the health of the tree by the quality of its fruits. America, as is evidenced by this week’s annual materialistic ritual known as ‘Black Friday’, has produced this particularly rotten fruit, consistently. It’s getting way too predictable for our liking.

Fire Kills 112 Workers Making Clothes for US BrandsNovember 26, 2012 "ABC" -- The 100-plus workers who died in a fire late Saturday at a high-rise garment factory in Bangladesh were working overtime making clothes for major American retailers, including Wal-Mart, according to workers' rights groups.

My aunt lives in al-Bureij refugee camp in the center of the Gaza Strip, not far away from where I live in Deir al-Balah. Her house was bombed many times during Israel’s 2008-09 attacks on Gaza and is still a very possible target for the Israeli air strikes.

The actual target is her brother-in-law who now has taken Ahmad Jabari’s place as a new commander in Hamas’s military wing. For the sake of their target, Israeli F-16s couldn’t care less when they kill children, women or the elderly or to destroy a five-story building even if they know that “the wanted man” doesn’t stay with his wife and children in this home.

23 Bahraini health workers sentenced to prison
(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) - On Wednesday, a court in the Persian Gulf kingdom sentenced the medics to three months in jail for treating Bahraini protesters and taking part in demonstrations.

The medics are among the 95 health workers who were arrested between February and March 2011.

Prosecutor Abdulrahman al-Sayyed said the medics have "committed crimes and violations, breaching the law and norms."

Over the past few years a growing number of white people have joined the longstanding indigenous people’s critique of the holocaust denial that is at the heart of the Thanksgiving holiday. In two recent essays, I have examined the disturbing nature of a holiday rooted in a celebration of the European conquest of the Americas, which means the celebration of the Europeans’ genocidal campaign against Indigenous people that is central to the creation of the United States.

Many similar pieces have been published in predominantly white left/progressive media, while indigenous people continue to mark the holiday as a “National Day of Mourning.”

In recent years I have refused to participate in Thanksgiving Day meals, even with friends and family who share this critical analysis and reject the natio…

The Revolving Door from the Pentagon to the Private Sector
What do Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, Raytheon, and Northrop Grumman have in common? Each of these corporations is one of the top five largest defense contractors in the nation. In 2011 alone, the Department of Defense committed to spending nearly $100 billion with just these five companies. To put that in perspective, that is about the same amount spent on the entire federal education budget for 2011.

Obama: Evil: Plain and Simple
November 18, 2012 -- In a recent Real News piece, senior editor Paul Jay objected to talk of lesser evilism: “… I think this whole terminology lesser evil, it’s a terrible mistake to use such terminology. The problem is it’s turning this whole thing into some kind of moral debate, and neither Romney nor Obama are evil. They are the products of a social-economic system. They represent different sections of the elite…”1

I still think Real News is the best progressivist video fare available, and Jay is one of the best news anchors, but Jay’s assertion still leaves me astounded. That his assertion is unfounded is fully refuted by Obama holding the US hand over Israel to prevent it from UN censure.

Evenhandedness is out the window on this slaughter as well. According to the Obama administration, Hamas is to blame.2

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney had this to say: “Well, we strongly condemn the barrage of rocket fire from Gaza into Israel, and we regret …

Obama: Evil: Plain and Simple
November 18, 2012 -- In a recent Real News piece, senior editor Paul Jay objected to talk of lesser evilism: “… I think this whole terminology lesser evil, it’s a terrible mistake to use such terminology. The problem is it’s turning this whole thing into some kind of moral debate, and neither Romney nor Obama are evil. They are the products of a social-economic system. They represent different sections of the elite…”1

I still think Real News is the best progressivist video fare available, and Jay is one of the best news anchors, but Jay’s assertion still leaves me astounded. That his assertion is unfounded is fully refuted by Obama holding the US hand over Israel to prevent it from UN censure.

Evenhandedness is out the window on this slaughter as well. According to the Obama administration, Hamas is to blame.2

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney had this to say: “Well, we strongly condemn the barrage of rocket fire from Gaza into Israel, and we regret …

Israel Kills Family Of 9 In Gaza:
November 18, 2012 "Al Jazeera" --- Al Jazeera's Nadim Baba, reporting from Gaza, has said that the search continues for survivors of an Israeli air strike that killed nine members of the same family in Gaza.

Israeli forces have launched dozens of airstrikes on Gaza City, targeting governmental and civilian facilities and other objects mostly located in densely-populated areas. The targets have included the building of the Council of Ministers in the west of the City, which was completely destroyed and a number of nearby houses damaged; the building of the police command in the center of the City, which was completely destroyed and a number of nearby housesdamaged; the building of the Civil Department of the Ministry of Interior in the south of the City, which was attacked for the second time, causing damage to al-Quds Hospital and a number of public and UN…

A Palace Revolution
November 15, 2012 "Antiwar" -- The political class is aghast at the spectacle of one after another of their holy icons falling: first it was David Petraeus, outed by a lone FBI agent in Tampa who took the discovery of his affair with Paula Broadwell to the House Republican leadership and effectively dynamited the CIA chieftain’s career. Now it’s Gen. John Allen, commander of US forces in Afghanistan: the discovery of his “thousands of pages of emails” to Jill Kelley — a 37-year-old looker whose complaints of email “harassment” garnered the full attention of the FBI and led to the downfall of Petraeus — has him in the dock.

At number 34, Israel’s main regional rival, Iran, is far behind. Indeed, every other Near Eastern country, with the exceptions of Yemen (37) and Qatar (43), is more heavily militarized than the Islamic Republic, according to the Index, whose research is funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Singapore ranks second, followed by Syria, Russia, Jordan, and Cyprus, according to the Index, which is based on a number of weighted variables, such as the comparison of a country’s military budget with its gross domestic product (GDP), and the percentage of the GDP it spends on health care.

Six of the top 10 states, including Israel (1), Syria (4), Jordan (5), Kuwait (7), Bahrain (9), and Saudi Arab…

Ron Paul: 'Our Constitution Has Failed' - Yahoo! News
Throughout his speech, Paul questioned not only the fundamental health of America's social compact, but specifics like fiat money, the power of the Federal Reserve, the PATRIOT Act, Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act modifications, undeclared war, the illegalization of medical marijuana, mandatory sentencing requirements for drug crimes, the illegalization of hemp, TSA searches, federal debt and borrowing, the White House's authority to assassinate those it declares terrorists, the legalization of detaining U.S. citizens for national-security purposes, the political power of AIPAC, and the regulation of light bulbs and toilets in people's homes.

That the stars of America's national security establishment are being devoured by out-of-control surveillance is a form of sweet justice

By Glenn Greenwald

November 13, 2012 "The Guardian" -- The Petraeus scandal is receiving intense media scrutiny obviously due to its salacious aspects, leaving one, as always, to fantasize about what a stellar press corps we would have if they devoted a tiny fraction of this energy to dissecting non-sex political scandals (this unintentionally amusing New York Times headline from this morning - "Concern Grows Over Top Military Officers' Ethics" - illustrates that point: with all the crimes committed by the US military over the last decade and long before, it's only adultery that causes &q…

One such event was held at Wits University in Johannesburg. Ebrahim Ebrahim, the ANC’s head of international relations, told participants that Oliver Tambo “would travel the world engaging with students, unions, churches and other formations convincing them to divest and end their support for apartheid South Africa.”

Ebrahim added: “However, the international anti-apartheid movement and sanctions campaign was also shouldered, taken on and defended by thousands of ordinary citizens from numerous countries around the world. Today, there is a similar international civil society solidarity campaign in support of the Palestinians …

The Lull Before the Social Storm : Information Clearing House: ICH
We're now in a lull before a vast, revolutionary storm. The U.S. is sinking faster and faster in all the ways vital to the future of our society, from the The Great Global Economic-Financial Crisis which the U.S. produced with insane Big Bank speculations and corruption to educational decline and bureaucratic strangulation to losing imperials wars around the world to political deadlock. I'm sure any intelligent American who is honest with himself can quickly write down a long list of the crucial ways in which the U.S. is declining now. Maybe half of Americans are too ignorant about the world or lack the intelligence to see all of this Big Picture of Crisis and Decline. They are confused and mad and despairing and see no way out, but assume the Republicrat System will go on and on and are trying merely to fit in and keep or get a job with a livable wage for them and their families. Even some knowledgeabl…

Noam Chomsky: To humiliate and degrade Impressions of Gaza
November 07, 2012 "Information Clearing House" - Even a single night in jail is enough to give a taste of what it means to be under the total control of some external force. And it hardly takes more than a day in Gaza to begin to appreciate what it must be like to try to survive in the world’s largest open-air prison, where a million and a half people, in the most densely populated area of the world, are constantly subject to random and often savage terror and arbitrary punishment, with no purpose other than to humiliate and degrade, and with the further goal of ensuring that Palestinian hopes for a decent future will be crushed and that the overwhelming global support for a diplomatic settlement that will grant these rights will be nullified.

New film on Nazi links to Zionism sidesteps the toughest questions
This trip was no mere tourist holiday but instead a mission, led by the Tuchlers, for enabling von Mildenstein to write convincing articles for Der Angriff in support of Jewish emigration to Palestine. Although never specified or discussed in The Flat, the Nazi government had in fact been approached about this matter by the Zionist Federation of Germany, of which Kurt Tuchler was an active member, and which argued — in eerie similarity to Nazi racialist views — that Jews, understood as a people separate and apart, were unsuited to reside anywhere but in a country of their own (Lenni Brenner, Zionism in the Age of the Dictators, 1983, chapter 5).

The village has been repeatedly attacked by such “price tag” militants. Last year, two cars went up in flames, and three months later the mosque in Burqa was burned, with the words “Mitzpe Yitzhar” (an outpost near Nablus) and “War” painted on its charred walls.

On Saturday, several cars were damaged and graffiti references to a Migron outpost left on the crime scene. Israeli police say they are “canvassing the area.”

Despite the widespread coverage of “price tag” violence, mainstream media outlets habitually neglect the pivotal role of the Israeli government in breeding these attacks. There is a particular tendency …

There’s nothing new in Mahmoud Abbas’ and the PLO’s renunciation of Palestinian refugee rights
Israeli- and US-backed Palestinian Authority leader and nominal PLO chairman Mahmoud Abbas caused renewed consternation among Palestinians last week with his renunciation, on Israeli television, of the right of Palestinian refugees to return to the homes from which they were ethnically cleansed by invading Zionist gangs during and after 1948, and his redefinition of Palestine to include only the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Quite a lot. First, there’s what we call the macro-economy. The budget cuts that Romney/Ryan propose will certainly slow growth. If the European downturn continues that could tip us into a recession. The cuts certainly won’t provide the kind of stimulus that Obama’s jobs bill, for instance, pushes. Romney’s plan is based on magic: Just because he gets elected, the economy is supposed to take off. There is no evidence that anything like that would happen. Quite the contrary — I think the opposite would happen. The business community would see the cutbacks coming and that would itself cause a slowdown in the economy.

So that’s the macroeconomy. Secondly, the Romney/Ryan budget promises to spend more on the military while cutting taxes and cutting the deficit, and that means only one thing. If you look at the arithmetic, it means less investment in infrastructure, R&D, education…

NAIROBI (AlertNet) – Migrants travelling from the Horn of Africa to Yemen in search of a better life are regularly kidnapped, tortured and raped, according to a new report by the Regional Mixed Migration Secretariat (RMMS).

At least 230,000 migrants have undertaken this hazardous, often lethal, journey over the last six years and the rate of migration is increasing dramatically. In the first eight months of 2012, over 70,000 African migrants entered Yemen, three quarters of whom were Ethiopian.

Kidnapping has become increasingly common in Yemen, with the majority of respondents who arrived in the last 18 months saying they were held for ransom after disembarking from smugglers boats, said the report from RMMS, working to help migrants in the Horn of Africa and across the Gulf of Aden.

“If money [was] sent from our friends or relatives, we would be released and be free. If not, they wo…

Good morning, President Abbas | The Electronic Intifada
“I visited Safad before once. But I want to see Safad. It’s my right to see it, but not to live there. Palestine now for me is ‘67 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital. This is now and forever…this is Palestine for me. I am a refugee, but I am living in Ramallah. I believe the West Bank and Gaza is Palestine and the other parts are Israel.” - Mahmoud Abbas

The next time someone tells me any particular word I choose is too strong or harsh to describe Abbas, I am considering printing the transcript of this interview and slapping said person with it.

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Israel has officially admitted after more than two decades of secrecy that it ordered the Israeli spy agency Mossad to carry out the assassination of Palestinian leader Khalil Ibrahim Wazir.

Chris Hedges: Why I’m Voting Green : Information Clearing House: ICH
October 29, 2012 "Truthdig" -- The November election is not a battle between Republicans and Democrats. It is not a battle between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. It is a battle between the corporate state and us. And if we do not immediately engage in this battle we are finished, as climate scientists have made clear. I will defy corporate power in small and large ways. I will invest my energy now solely in acts of resistance, in civil disobedience and in defiance. Those who rebel are our only hope. And for this reason I will vote next month for Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate, although I could as easily vote for Rocky Anderson of the Justice Party. I will step outside the system. Voting for the “lesser evil”—or failing to vote at all—is part of the corporate agenda to crush what is left of our anemic democracy. And those who continue to participate in the vaudeville of a two-party process, w…

October 29, 2012 "Information Clearing House" - Move over, Donald Trump and Ted Turner. The Department of Defense is the world’s top property owner with holdings around the world – a fact relevant amid election-year debate about the size and role of our military.

In the United States alone, DOD occupies 1.9 billion square feet of office space – about three times the floor space of all the nation’s Walmart stores, or 10 times the office space in all of Los Angeles. Worldwide, DOD has more than 2 million people working on 5,000 sites in 41 countries.

(Walmart, the nation’s largest private employer, has 1.4 million workers.)

Today’s video has more on the world’s biggest landlord. Take a look, share it with a friend in uniform, then consider the size and scope of today’s military in our discussion thread below.

The ANC, South Africa’s ruling party, led the decades-long struggle against apartheid.

The official declaration of the conference, held in Pretoria/Tshwane from 25-28 October, “Reiterated its support for Palestinian aspirations for an independent state including the full membership of the UN; and called on the UN Security Council to show leadership in halting the expansion of Israeli settlements and the harassment of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.”

The United Nations has decided to set up an investigations unit dedicated to examining the legality of drone attacks and uncovering cases in which civilians are killed in the Obama administration’s drone war.

In 2001 Aljamal finished high school and hoped to study electrical engineering at the Islamic University of Gaza (IUG).

“I scored very high marks – 97.8 in the science track,” she recalled, speaking from her home in Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp. “But my family was going through very hard financial circumstances. Two of my sisters were already studying at the university at that time. Some of my family’s friends told us that the HLF gave scholarships to needy people.

“So I applied. They asked me to provide some documents and reports to prove my financial status and that I was a high school graduate. After a while, after I had begun studying at IUG, they called to tell me I had been selected for a scholarship. …

About Me

I am concerned with the direction the US is taking. I have lived in the US since 1990 and never afraid as much since the September, 2001 attack by terror plot (government, group ... don't know the fact) on New York and the pentagon. Many innocent people died that day, but, the response was the most foolish American policy ever. Civil liberty curbed, detention without trial became a norm, torture used, dissent voices shot down. Now since 2003, the US is engaging in unlawful war where bound to be losing. My voice may not count but I see no future for American kids who are going to find bankrupt country some day. The reversal policy is urgent.